Staff in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University have been involved in an initiative to introduce GeoGebra [1] to just over 200 students on the Science and Engineering Foundation Studies programme in the academic year 2008-9. Mathematics forms an important part (25%) of the programme for most of the students and their prior knowledge of mathematics is diverse. Some students’ highest mathematics qualification is a GCSE while others have taken A-level mathematics but have not obtained combined grades high enough for entry to their chosen degree course. A significant part of the mathematics taught on the foundation programme requires students to manipulate algebraic expressions and to sketch functions. It was decided that GeoGebra would be an ideal tool to amongst other things help students link algebraic manipulations with the corresponding graphs and to enable students to see the effect of varying parameters.
